Mugsy a.k.a. the Groover and I were best friends. Before we had cars, we would smoke some pot, go down to Howard’s which was more or less a K-Mart and play pinball (Gorgar - will EAT you!), eat some Bar-B-Cue pork at Jerry’s (was it?) buy a superball for a quarter, and go bouncing it back to my house. If we did not lose the ball, we might end up in the basement where we invented hammerball®, played as such: The pitcher would deliver the ball, with one bounce to the batter. The batter would take the hammer, holding it sideways-ish to maximize hitting area and deliver the swing, hopefully hitting the pitcher in the gonads with the ball. Once, when the ball was lost (common occurrence), I located a golf ball and decided to use it instead…I pitched it to Groover and he hit it perfectly – at my head, with some serious velocity, some Arnold Palmer shit. Never substitute a golf ball for a superball when playing hammerball, words to live by.
Later, we would use hockey sticks for air guitars listening perhaps to Guns on the Roof...
Groover and I were walking through the snow one day stoned on the dried-out “Columbian” we thought was the good stuff, often more seeds and stems than anything, seeds that would explode or drop off hot and leave suspicious holes in upholstery or clothing…so it was a snow day, when they cancel school because no snow plows exist and who needs them when 3-4 inches is a blizzard, but the snow had thawed a little and refrozen, so the top was a layer of ice and when you walked it would support you, until you put your full weight on it, then you would go through. A little hard to describe, but it was like walking on another planet. Well, then one of us looks down and sees a little patch of black fur, which we investigated and discovered was a frozen little puppy. Being pubescent boys, and little stoners, we laughed until we peed our pants, holding it by its tail and making it walk. It’s…it’s…a Pup-sickle!! It ended up in the Kreidler’s mailbox, I believe. There is karma, for this episode and for the frogs and for the gerbils and for the crayfish as well. The crayfish I poked with an unlit firecracker, which it grabbed, which I lit, and they called him Lefty after that.
